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The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced that it plans to examine the issue of regulation of Big Tech's financial services. The UK regulator is to consider how such regulation of firms such as Apple, Google and Amazon could prevent the potential for them causing harm to the financial services sector. While acknowledging the ability of such companies to bring innovative approaches to financial services, the FCA has voiced concerns that if they build dominant positions this could lead to a "potential exploitation of market power".

The BIS Innovation Hub London Centre has launched the Project Rosalind TechSprint, inviting expressions of interest to come up with retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) use cases. Participants will be required to develop feasible prototypes by using the set of application programming interfaces (APIs) developed in phase one of Project Rosalind. It aims to develop prototypes of an API platform for the distribution of retail CBDC. The purely experimental setup is based on a two-tier distribution model, comprising a central bank at the foundation of the retail CBDC system and with customer-facing activities carried out by the private sector payment interface providers (PIPs).

The U.K. Treasury is seeking a "Head of Central Bank Digital Currency" to lead its work on a potential digital pound. The CBDC chief will lead the Treasury team as it works with the Bank of England on the government's soon to be issued consultation on the digital pound, the listing continues. This role will fit into the existing Payments and Fintech Team and is a separate from the current head of crypto-assets and digital currencies.

The UK Government has floated proposals to bring cryptoassets into the same regulatory regime as traditional financial services. The consultation sets out key design features of the regime covering themes such as prudential requirements, data reporting, consumer protection, location policy and operational resilience. The paper also proposes regimes for a range of cross-cutting issues which apply across crypto-asset activities and business models, including market abuse and crypto-asset issuance and disclosures. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1133404/TR_Privacy_edits_Future_financial_services_regulatory_regime_for_cryptoassets_vP.pdf

The Bank of England (BoE) and HM Treasury launched a digital pound central bank digital currency (CBDC) consultation. Both want to ensure the public have access to safe money that is convenient to use as everyday lives become more digital, while supporting private sector innovation, choice and efficiency in digital payments. At this stage, they judge it likely that the digital pound will be needed, but a decision to go ahead  won't be taken until around the middle of the decade, and it wouldn't be launched until the second half of the decade. Alongside the consultation paper, the BoE published a technology working paper on its CBDC technology thinking.

The Bank of England is proposing a limit of between £10,000 and £20,000 per individual as the appropriate balance between managing risks and supporting wide usability of the digital pound. The Technology Working Paper accompanying the Consultation Paper sets out an illustrative and complementary conceptual model consisting of a core ledger, API layer, analytics and alias service. The core ledger operated by the Bank might be centralised, running as a traditional database, or it might use Distributed Ledger Technology (whether a blockchain or another form of the technology). The Bank would provide the digital pound and the central infrastructure, including the 'core ledger'. Private sector firms - which could be banks or approved non-bank firms - would provide the interface between the Bank's central infrastructure and users by offering wallets and payment services. These private companies would be able to integrate the digital pound, as the settlement asset, into the services they would offer to wallet holders. The wallets would be operated on a 'pass-through' basis. That is to say, they would not constitute a claim on the wallet provider in the way that a bank account is a claim on a bank. Nor would they represent a custody arrangement. Rather, the wallets would hold all of the customer related information and 'pass-through' the customers instructions to the Bank's infrastructure. All of the digital pounds would be held on the Bank of England's central ledger.

Millicent, a fintech company co-funded by the Innovate UK, has successfully performed a test of a full-reserve stablecoin aimed at the retail market. The reserves are held in a ringfenced account safeguarded by a regulated third party, directly at the Bank of England. Millicent runs on a hybrid Layer-1 distributed ledger network (DLT). A sandboxed demonstration simulated fiat on-ramping via Faster Payments from one of the UK's largest consumer banks, as well as the on-chain conversion and minting of stablecoins pegged to the British Pound Sterling, and a variety of payment and settlement scenarios.

A Member of the Forum presented on potential business models for Payment Interface Providers (PIPs) in a CBDC ecosystem. The presentation set out that PIPs would likely undertake activities suggested in the Bank's 2020 Discussion Paper on CBDC such as onboarding clients, conducting KYC (Know Your Costumer) and AML (Anti Money Laundering) checks, authenticating users and providing consumer protection and overlay services, among others. The presentation then laid out a set of costs that such a PIP would likely incur in offering those services. A second Member presented a view on how the private sector could collaborate with policymakers to deliver on some of the G7 Principles on CBDC (published in October 2021).

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has added crypto-friendly payments app Revolut to its list of companies authorized to offer crypto products and services in the country. Revolut was among a small number of entities granted an extension to the FCA's temporary cryptocurrency licensing program in March 2022. It was the last company on this list as other applicants withdrew their requests, were refused registration, or had their licenses granted before the end of June.

"I do not like the term (LDI) and never did, it has been hijacked by consultants and has morphed into what we are seeing now," said John Ralfe, who in 2001 led the 2.3 billion pound Boots Pension Fund's shift into bonds. "The fund didn't load up on debt... Pension schemes were doing disguised borrowing, it's absolutely toxic... There was much greater risk in the financial system than anyone - including me - would have thought."

"In the wake of the margin crunch for UK pension funds, dealers have seen a surge in demand for committed collateral transformation facilities that allow the funds to swap less-liquid assets for eligible collateral to meet their calls."

The Bank of England (BoE) is quietly pushing for approval of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), while our national broadcaster stands idly by and provides little in the way of coverage. The public consultation document for a retail CBDC was initially set to conclude on June 7 2023. It has now been extended until June 30 2023 due to an omission in the questionnaire. There are concerns over the accessibility of the consultation document. Questions arise about the document's clarity and the intentions behind this intervention in people's lives. To gain insights, we sought the expertise of a health researcher specialising in health literacy, mainly working with individuals facing mental health challenges and dementia. Their evaluation of the consultation process conducted by the Bank of England and HM Treasury revealed significant concerns regarding the accessibility of the documentation provided to the general public.

"We are proud to announce that IDEMIA is working alongside the Bank of England in a ground-breaking project exploring new approaches to assured identity, privacy, and offline payments in the design of Central Bank Digital Currencies."

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published the results of its Project Rosalind joint work with the Bank of England. It explored how a universal and extensible application programming interface (API) layer could connect central bank and private sector infrastructures and facilitate retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) payments. It demonstrated that a well designed API layer could work with different private sector applications and central bank ledger designs and that a set of simple and standardized API functionalities could support a diverse range of use cases.

"The Bank of England presented a summary of the Consultation Paper and the accompanying Technology Working Paper, published on 7 February 2023. The presentation covered the proposed distribution model, technology design considerations and conceptual architecture for a UK CBDC, called the digital pound."

"Proof of Concept work and a final report on the feasibility of Offline Payments with a future digital currency."

"A Forum Member presented a view on why offline functionality should be a key feature of CBDC. The presentation exposed why offline settlement finality was important in a world where physical cash usage is diminishing. The presenter noted that offline settlement finality offered benefits in terms of availability, throughput and operational infrastructure costs, where existing real time (online) settlement systems encountered the biggest challenges. The presentation also mentioned that, without offline finality, any CBDC system would be difficult to differentiate from any other real time payment system. The presenter also mentioned drawbacks of offline systems, including the higher risk of counterfeiting and double spending due to added technical complexity."

Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe reportedly said that the Bank of England (BoE) is unlikely to offer a digital pound that works like banknotes, opting instead for an instrument managed through some sort of account, reflecting concerns that it could be used in crime and money laundering. The BoE plans to release a consultation paper at the end of the year about how a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) might look. Cunliffe said it's unlikely that any digital pounds will be issued within the next three years, that it's more likely in five or more years.

Barclays will host the "CBDC Hackathon 2022" on September 27 and 28, 2022. It will consist of a series of coding challenges that will simulate the use of central bank digital currency (CDBC) and commercial bank money. Teams of four will develop coding solutions to multiple challenges including connecting to Barclays simulation of central and commercial bank application programming interfaces (APIs). The tasks will be drawn from the Bank of England's CBDC platform model.

The Financial Services and Markets Bill 2022 has been introduced into the U.K. Parliament. Section 22 of the Bill contains a new power for the government to introduce bespoke rules on the regulation of payments, payment systems and service providers in relation to the payments that include "digital settlement assets", which includes any digital representation of value or rights that "(a) can be used for the settlement of payment obligations; (b) can be transferred, stored or traded electronically, and (c) uses technology supporting the recording or storage of data (which may include distributed ledger technology)." The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that HM Treasury will be working to understand how distributed ledger technology could be applied to a U.K. sovereign debt instrument.